KC-46

Cobham (Davenport, Iowa): Refueling systems, including wing aerial refueling pods and centerline drogue system

DRS Laurel Technologies Inc. (Johnstown, Pa.): Aerial Refueling Operator Station (AROS)

Eaton Aerospace: Electromechanical and cargo door actuation systems (Grand Rapids, Mich.); hydraulic and fuel distribution subcomponents (Jackson, Mich.)

GE Aviation Systems (Grand Rapids, Mich.; Clearwater, Fla.): Mission control system

Goodrich: Interiors (Colorado); landing gear (Ontario, Canada)

Honeywell: Auxiliary power unit (Phoenix); cabin pressure control system (Tucson, Ariz.), air data inertial navigation (Coon Rapids, Minn.); lighting (Urbana, Ohio)

Moog Inc.: Electro-hydraulic servo valves, actuators, stabilize trim controls, leading edge slat actuator, inboard/outboard leading edge rotary actuators, autopilot actuators, elevator feel system (East Aurora, N.Y.; Wolverhampton, UK); refueling boom actuators (Torrance, Calif.)

Northrop Grumman (Rolling Meadows, Ill.): Large Aircraft Infrared Countermeasures (LAIRCM)

Parker Aerospace (Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Utah): Refueling components including the receptacle door actuator, aerial refueling interface control system, and wing refueling pod hydraulic power packs; primary flight controls and fuel equipment; pneumatic, fluid conveyance, and hydraulic equipment

Pratt & Whitney (Middletown, Conn.): Engines

Raytheon Company (El Segundo, Calif.): Digital radar warning receiver and digital anti-jam receiver GPS

Rockwell Collins (Cedar Rapids, Iowa): Integrated display system featuring 15.1-inch diagonal crystal displays built on proven technology from the commercial 787; tactical situational awareness system; remote vision system 3-D and 2-D technology for the boom operator; communications, navigation, surveillance, networking and flight control systems

Spirit: Forward fuselage section; strut; nacelle components to include inlet, fan cowl and core cowl; fixed fan duct (Wichita, Kan.); fixed leading edge (Prestwick, Scotland)

Triumph Group Inc.: Horizontal stabilizer and aft body section, including pressure bulkhead; wing center section, doors, nacelles and other components including cowl doors, seal depressor panels, acoustic panels and aft wheel well bulkhead

Woodward Inc. (Skokie, Ill.): Several elements of the aerial refueling boom, including the sensor system, control unit, and telescopic and flight control sticks.

The US Air Force's plan for testing and evaluating the Boeing KC-46A tanker is "not executable" and could overrun the schedule by at least eight months, the US military's top weapons tester said in a new report.

Michael Gilmore, director of the office of test and evaluation for the Department of Defense, sharply criticized the USAF's ability to certify the KC-46A for military operations by the end of Fiscal 2017.

USAF and Boeing officials were not immediately available to comment on Gilmore's report.

Gilmore rejects the USAF's apparent planning assumption that the KC-46A schedule can be more aggressive than most military aircraft programmes.

The USAF assumption is flawed even though the KC-46A is based on the 767-2C, a new derivative of the certified commercial airliner, Gilmore said.

Gilmore cited the US Navy's experience with the Boeing P-8A Poseidon, a submarine-hunting variant of the commercial 737-800 fuselage. Like other fixed-wing military transports, each aircraft in the P-8A test fleet averages fewer than 30 flight hours per month, Gilmore said. The USAF schedule however, schedule requires each KC-46A to average 42h per month during flight-testing.

The KC-46A also built in an "optimistic" re-fly rate of 15%, meaning the number of tests that have to be repeated due to unexpected results, Gilmore said. The P-8A refly rate is averaging 45%, he noted.

The USAF also allocated 750h to the operational test programme, but Gilmore estimates the minimum necessary to complete the schedule is 1,250h of flight tests.

If the KC-46A flight test programme achieves no worse than the P-8A's average, the schedule could be delayed a minimum of eight months, Gilmore wrote.

The USAF selected Boeing's proposal last year over an EADS North America bid. Boeing is expected to build 179 KC-46As to begin replacing the USAF's aging fleet of KC-135 tankers.

The KC-46A integrates a new refueling boom, wing-mounted refueling pods and a new cockpit system.

March 26 (Reuters) - One year into its development, the Air Force's new KC-46 refueling tanker being developed by Boeing Co faces "significant schedule risks" and technical challenges, and is already $900 million over budget, a congressional report found.

The Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said the Air Force had limited its liability for cost overruns on the $51.7 billion program by using a fixed-price contract, but schedule delays were still possible.

"Even with these safeguards, it is important to note that one year into development, Air Force and contractor development cost estimates exceed the development contract amount and significant schedule risks have been identified," GAO wrote in an annual report on the program required by Congress.

The program is already $900 million over the target price of $4.4 billion for the initial development contract, and $400 million over the contract's ceiling of $4.9 billion.

The contract calls for the government to cover 60 percent of overruns up to the ceiling. Boeing has to cover any overrun beyond that level, unless the government changes its requirements for the tanker and renegotiates its contract.

Boeing beat out Europe's EADS to win the contract in February 2011, capping a decade of failed Air Force attempts to start replacing its aging fleet of KC-135 refueling planes, which are now 49 years old on average.

GAO said the program had an accelerated schedule with significant overlap, or concurrency, among the development, testing and production of the new 767-based planes.

The issue of "concurrency" has troubled another big Pentagon weapons program, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter built by Lockheed Martin Corp. The Pentagon has restructured that program three times in recent years to reduce the overlap between development and production.

GAO said the tanker program was not as challenging as an all-new weapon system since it used a modified commercial platform, but it still faced risk on three critical technologies that had not been tested in a realistic environment.

It noted that the Air Force and Boeing were both concerned about risks to the development and test schedule for the new planes due to a tight flight testing schedule, work on the commercial Boeing line to prepare the aircraft for military modifications, the need for two Federal Aviation Administration certifications, and software challenges.

GAO said Boeing's recent decision to shut down its Wichita, Kansas, facility where it had planned to militarize the planes added a further complication, despite the government's insistence that it will hold Boeing to its contractual obligation to deliver 18 aircraft by August 2017.

"If the provisions in the current contract remain intact, the government's cost liability will be safeguarded ... However these provisions cannot prevent delays in delivering aircraft should problems be discovered late in development or while production is under way," it said.

Only about 60 percent of the flight testing of the new planes is planned to be competed when the Air Force plans to start low-rate production of the new tankers in August 2015.

GAO identified three technologies that still needed to be demonstrated in a realistic environment, including a new three-dimensional display for the crew members who operate the plane's refueling boom and several software issues.

It also raised concerns about the plane's weight, which is already near its limit, and instability of the hose used on new refueling pods.

The Air Force acknowledged that there was some concurrency on the program, but said it was "nowhere near as much as most other major aircraft acquisition programs," adding that it viewed the risk of schedule delays as "moderate."

"The Air Force clearly recognizes schedule as the top risk on the KC-46 program ... however the Air Force believes the GAO assessment that the KC-46 program has 'significant concurrency' overstates the actual level and impact of schedule concurrency between development, testing and production activity," it said in a response to the GAO report.

The KC-46 tanker program faces potential budget issues that could
force a renegotiation of the U.S. Defense Department’s contract with
Boeing, according to budget analysts.
The program, considered a
future cornerstone of the Air Force, is being squeezed by both current
funding levels and a potential sequester.
DoD planned to spend
$1.8 billion on the tanker program in fiscal 2013. However, Congress has
failed to pass a new budget, leaving programs funded under a continuing
resolution that leaves financial support at 2012 levels. For the KC-46
program, that means making do with just $900 million, or half of what
the program office had planned for this year.
That presents a
major problem for the aerial tanker program, said Todd Harrison, a
budget expert with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
The
KC-46 is particularly vulnerable, Harrison said, because it is still in
the development stage, where budgets are slated to ramp up
significantly year to year. But there is also concern that spending cuts
could force the government to change a contract that is considered very
friendly to the Pentagon.
The KC-46 contract is capped at $4.9
billion, with a floor of $3.9 billion. The Air Force is responsible for
60 percent of those costs and Boeing for 40 percent; anything above $4.9
billion is paid for solely by Boeing. If the Air Force, due to the
continuing resolution, cannot meet its funding requirement for fiscal
2013, Boeing could face a choice — paying out of pocket to maintain
planned spending levels, or slowing down the tanker’s development.
The
Air Force, in turn, could find itself forced to choose between delaying
development, which would drive up per-unit cost, and renegotiating its
contract with Boeing — something DoD would desperately like to avoid.
“The
USAF will be bending over backwards not to damage this contract, so I
rather think the program managers will muddle through,” Rebecca Grant,
an analyst with the Iris Research Group, said in an email.
But in a
worst-case renegotiation, “Boeing might have an opening to increase the
price, due to overall cost increases in the supply chain or their own
share,” she wrote. “Anyway you look at it, delay adds cost. The question
is how much.”
The tanker aircraft program, like the rest of the
federal government, is also facing the threat of steep cuts under
sequestration. For a growing program already operating at half cost
under a continuing resolution, the added hit from automatic budget cuts
would be a “disaster,” said Harrison, who warns it could force DoD to
renegotiate with Boeing on the program.
The thought that sequester
could force the Pentagon to work out a new deal with Boeing was first
raised by a DoD official last September.
“I don’t want to break my
contract, and I’m fearful sequestration may force me to do that,” Maj.
Gen John Thompson, the KC-46 program executive, said at the Air Force
Association conference in National Harbor, Md. “If I have to break my
fixed-price contract, then I stand the potential to lose out on some of
the great things that we put in this vehicle up front.”
Boeing directed request for comment on the tanker program to the Air Force.
“The program is not impacted under the current [continuing resolution],” Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said in an email.
Both
Grant and Harrison are quick to agree that operating under the
continuing resolution is not a death sentence for the program. If DoD
can work a new budget so that the program reaches that $1.8 trillion
figure by the end of fiscal 2013, there should be little impact.
But the longer the government operates at last year’s funding levels, the greater the risk to the program, Harrison warned.
“There's
still room to avoid the most devastating effect on this program, but
that window is narrowing,” Harrison said. “But if sequestration happens,
all bets are off.

Air Force, Boeing Working To Reduce KC-46A Tanker's Weight

The
Air Force and Boeing are relying on an "active" program to reduce the
KC-46A tanker's weight, which is posing a technical challenge that --
if not remedied -- could erode the aircraft's ability to meet mandatory
operating requirements for takeoff, mission radius and landing,
according to government and industry officials.